Fall Festival – Artist Alley and Pre-holiday Sale

HEROES & DREAMS is a comic book shop in Flowood, Mississippi. It’s right on the outskirts of Jackson. They will be having their FALL FESTIVAL – ARTIST ALLEY & PRE-HOLIDAY SALE this coming Saturday (Nov 7th) at their store. I will definately be there, I’ll tell you what. I’ve heard the Mitch Bryd will be there sketching and signing books. Local Jackson artist/cartoonist Wade Acuff will be there. It’ll be cool to be able to hang out with Wade again. I’m going to enjoy hanging out with Mitch also. There’s more but I’m not sure who all is confirmed so the best thing to do is if you are in the Jackson area, just show up to the event and see who’s there. It’s all day Saturday. They open at 10:30 am. If you’re within driving distance and are really into comics then you should go support this.

These are the same people that put on the Jackson Comic Con this past July in the Jackson/Pearl area. Their shop is at 5352 hwy 25 in Flowood. The shopping center that they are in is right across from the Flowood Water Tower so you shouldn’t miss it. They are in suite #1650. They will be putting on another comic con next July also. It’s already growing and expanding from what this last one was. There are so few places in Mississippi that you can get comics at and even fewer that actually go out of their way to celebrate comics and the medium. This is one of these places. 3 Alarm Comics on the coast is another one. At my last count there were only 5 comic book shops in the whole state that I know of. And only two of them actually have events thru the year like this. If there is another comic book shop that I have missed either in counting or one that has events that I dont know of in MS please let me know cause as a cartoonist I want to let people know about it. The 5 I know of consists of 3 around the Jackson area, 1 on the coast, and 1 in Hattiesburg.

You can not get comics in the drug stores & grocery stores off of spinner racks anymore. With the way the distrubution is the only way to get them is in specialty comic shops and big chain book stores. The problem with the big chain book stores is that you dont tend to have that one on one contact like you do in the comic book shops. The big chain stores also seem to let the manga section push out the traditional comics. I’m not totally against manga, I just dont want our own comics replaced by it because it’s just easier to get your hands on. If manga was the only thing I could find growing up that’s what I would have wound up reading. Luckily I could find comics in 3 to 5 different stores in my home town which wasn’t that big of a town. Now you have to be in a big town to find anything that isn’t manga with even the manga being sparse. The big chains are not going to have the events like the comic shops have. A bunch of cartoonists, some new some old , some known some up and coming, gathered all together where you can get a glimpse of the magic behind the scenes. This is why we need to support these shops and their events. Especially if you are the slightist bit interested in comics. And this coming from a guy who puts his comics online everyday at http://bubbaworldcomix.com and I sell my books online. But I do utilize the local shops in my state to sell my books and do signings and go and support these events. It helps me as much as it does them. I enjoy the mess out of it too. This Saturday (Nov 7th) go see a bunch of cartoonists in their natural habitat, a comic book shop.